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It’s that time of year once again. Cabaret Macabre is back for its 13th installment. Hard to believe. So for such a significant number we have to up the ante as far as the bill goes, right? No worries. We’ve found one of the best folk bands currently playing the west coast, will welcome the return of a Seattle legend for his 13th year and welcome our old friends from Portland via Russia. There will, as always, be dance performance scattered in with the bands and this year’s lineup features some of Seattle’s finest burlesque and bellydance performers. And though the great Diva Le Deviant is sitting this year out as MC, her replacement is more than capable of filling her shoes. But she will be missed.

Due to it being a Monday, we’ll be starting the show a little early. The show starts at 8pm with The Bad Things expected to hit the stage at 10pm. We’ll try to get you home by midnight. Promise.

And…without further ado, may I introduce this year’s 13th Annual Cabaret Macabre lineup:

The festival is sold out but if you got tickets, we play Doe Bay Fest at 2:15pm – 3pm on the Garden Stage on Saturday, August 6th. Look for updates on our social media from Orcas Island. Excited to finally play this legendary event. If you missed out on tickets this year, we’ll see you again on Halloween for Cabaret Macabre!

They let us take over their stage and play our sad, sick songs. Best part of this show, besides being free, is it’s all ages. Lots of kiddies dancing. They’ve got great beer and you can bring food and eat it on the patio (we recommend Proletariat Pizza or Zippy’s Giant Burgers down the street) and the whole thing runs from 6pm – 9pm. We usually do two sets and bump vintage reggae and ska when we’re not on stage. Summer fun with your Bad Things.

After this we’ll be at Doe Bay Fest but it’s sold out so, if you were lucky enough to get tickets, we’ll see you there. We’ll try and post a report from this very unique and prestigious festival in the beautiful San Juan Islands.

Punk As Folk is almost upon us once again for its 5th year. It’s an all Pacific Northwest lineup again this year and once again we return to Conor Byrnes Pub in Ballard. We’ll be reunited with or old buddy Danbert Nobacon as well. Gonna be a hell of a night and tickets are available here.

Jimmy and Austin had the esteemed honor to perform and record a choral version of “Death of the Inferno” with the Singing in the Rain Family Choir last month as part of their “Sing Local” series. The result is one of the most gorgeous versions of this Bad Things classic you may ever hear. Here’s a video from the live performance. Stay tuned for more info on the CD release.

In the 14 years of The Bad Things existence, the band has played a variety of venues; from swanky cabarets and concert halls, to music festivals, breweries, schoolhouses, underground speakeasy’s and punk rock dive bars.

The latter has always been the true spiritual home of the band however. The character’s that inhabit their songs are daily drinkers that spend their last pennies at working class bars in an effort to black out the work week. The band’s first shows were at places like the 9LB Hammer, at the time a sole outpost of underground culture in a neighborhood that Seattle forgot.

Boy have times changed. Georgetown has become a hipster mecca and true dives are becoming harder and harder to find. This in a city that once boasted some of the dingiest shit holes known to man. A port town whose central business district was once dominated by strip bars, porn and gun shops, prostitutes and hustlers. Now you’d be hard pressed to find a dive bar not filled with ironic moustaches, tweed jackets and trust funders drinking PBR and Old Crow in an attempt to mimic authentic working class culture.

That’s why this show at Lucky Liquor, a punk rock dive bar if there ever was one, feels special. Located on the far south end of Boeing Field, on the shores of the Duwamish, one of the most polluted waterways in the United States, this feels like a homecoming of sorts. A return to the real south end, yet to be compromised by gentrification and hipster entrepreneurs, to gritty old Seattle, the true spiritual home of the Bad Things universe.

It’s made even better as they’ll be joined by fellow purveyors of vintage Northwest grit: Bakelite 78 and The Mongrel Jews.

Come celebrate Friday night and bask in an irony-free haven for the real working class. This will be the real deal my friends.